CRISPR

Last fall, Dr. Thomas Tubon and I presented a Bio-Link webinar on Genome Engineering with CRISPR-Cas9. Since my part will be to help our audience understand the basics of this system, I prepared a short tutorial with Molecule World . Enjoy!

A Quick CRISPR Tutorial

Go to the Digital World Biology CRISPR Structure Collection . Download the second item in the list, 5F9R, by clicking the link in the Download structure column. Identify the three components of the CRISPR - Cas system: The Cas9 protein, the ... Read more

CRISPR/Cas9 is a hot topic. CRISPR/Cas9 is not only revolutionizing the field of gene editing, aspects of this system can be used to teach fundamental concepts in immunology and evolution. In terms of immunology, CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) and restriction/methylation systems protect bacteria from phage. CRISPR sequences are in essence an adaptive immune system for prokaryotes, storing information from previously encountered invaders.

We've been fans of the Molecule of the Month series by David Goodsell, for many years. Not only is Dr. Goodsell a talented artist but he writes very clear descriptions of the ways molecules like proteins, RNA, and DNA work together and function inside a cell.
To learn about proteins and their activities, I like to go directly to the Molecule of the Month page, where I can find a list of articles organized by molecule type and name. Many of these articles can also be downloaded in a PDF format.
A really nice of his articles is that he includes PDB IDs ... Read more